Fig. 3
The simulation model of this study. (A) Field composition. A bacterium is represented by an agent with one pixel and moves on a 2D field with 256 × 256 pixels. The field is composed of empty field pixels and pillar pixels. (B) The bacterium randomly selects one of eight neighboring pixels and moves to the selected pixel if the selected pixel is an empty pixel. (C) A bacterium duplicates if an empty pixel exists in the neighboring 8 pixels. (D) The timing of the duplication is managed by a value of the energy required for duplication, ED (0 ≦ ED≦1). ED is constantly increasing up to 1; the bacterial movement reduces ED. A bacterium duplicates when ED reaches 1, and ED is reset to 0 just after the duplication.
